Growing up I drew on anything that was laying around. I started with construction paper and then typing paper. My favorite were the handouts in school. Instead of listening to the teacher or actually doing my work, I would spend all of my time drawing in the margins. And when that was full, I would flip it over onto the back and fill that up too.
It wasn't until high school art class that I was introduced to the idea of a sketchbook. Everything I scribbled in them was terrible, but it was where I really started to learn the idea of progression. Looking back as a senior on my Freshman books, I realized that you can actually get better with practice. What a novel concept!
With college came fancier pens, pencils, and of course paper. I still had my sketchbooks, but was required to try different weights and thicknesses of paper. Some were smooth like baby butts, some were super toothy (rough), and pretty much everything in-between.
Eventually I found out what works for me and what doesn't. I love the way sketchbook paper feels when I'm sketching. I love a little bit of tooth. I also love the way it enhances my lines and accepts my organic strokes... um, maybe my sketchbook and I should get a room.
To clarify, there are so many different types of paper available to an artist, it's almost impossible to cover it here. Even sketchbooks are like Baskins Robbins, there's a flavor for everyone.
Anyway, when I started working on my comic I realized something. My sketchbook had TOO much tooth. When I scanned in the first seven or eight pages, you can see what I came away with. See the neat little red arrow pointing at the grain from my sketchbook paper? The paper is lighter than this normally. I just bumped up the contrast so you can actually see the grain.
At first I liked it. Black Hole Cafe is supposed to be gritty, sort of a fantasy noir. I almost did the entire book in my sketchbook just because I like drawing there so much. However, after applying the "color" (BHC is a greyscale comic) It made it look dirty, and not in the sexy hollywood kind of way, just regular person dirty. Luckily for me you can use the Curves tool in Photoshop to reduce the dirt.
Note to self: "Post about photoshop techniques in the future"
Self: "Will do boss"
You can see the difference if you go back to the previous post of Simon and Ethan sitting at the table. But here's a scan of the boards I'm currently using from Blue line Pro. (Shameless plug for BLP)
You can immediately see how much smoother the grain is on the paper. I bumped up the contrast on this pic as well so you can see the blue lines. The blue is non-photo repo, which means they don't show up during the printing process. These are printed on Strathmore bristol boards which has a much smoother texture. They are basically thick art boards which hold up really well to most anything you want to do.
Bristol board does take getting used to, but it will make your work look cleaner. The best part about illustration boards is how clean the pencils come out during the scanning process. And trust me, the less time you spend trying to fix dirty drawings after the fact the better. As a musician I always hear the phrase "Let's clean it in post!". This is seldom true in music and almost never true in comics.
Note to self: "Contradict yourself later with a post about using photoshop for corrections"
Self: "Will do boss! We sure like to contradict ourselves don't we?"
There are plenty of articles about paper on the interweb, but as always, get your hands dirty. Go try as many different weights and textures of papers as you can find. Figure out what works for you and your project.
Check out these guys to get you started.
- TF
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